2011 – Blindfold: (a collection of poetry), McGill Queen’s University Press, Montreal and Kingston, Canada 120 pp. Nominated for the Relit Annual Award and selected by the Association of American University Presses for 2012 annual Exhibit.

Book Review: “Asfour provides readers with a deeply moving glimpse into the frustrations and disorientation of physical loss, as well as the heroic effort to find the language and metaphors that will translate his experience into poetry.” – Harold Heft, The Montreal Gazette
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Book Description: Blinded by a grenade in Lebanon as a teenager, poet John Asfour came to Canada armed with James Joyce’s words, “For the eyes, they bring us nothing. I have a hundred worlds to create and I am only losing one of them.” Blindfold investigates the ways in which disability influences our lives and is magnified in our minds. In a series of thematically linked poems, Asfour draws the metaphor of the blindfold across the eyes of sighted citizens who are impaired by estrangement, emotional complexity, and social pressures.

A sense of exile and belonging dominates the poems, following the journey of a blind man whose life in his new land has been hampered by prejudice and barriers to communication. Exposing the rich and surprising possibilities of a life that has undergone a frightening transformation, Blindfold relates feelings of loss, displacement, and disorientation experienced not only by the disabled but by everyone who finds themselves separated from the norm. Read a PREVIEW

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A Poem from the book Blindfold

Silver Threads

He recalls
the absence of sound, the impossible silence
the disappearance of light.

He is only aware of
the movement of his
mother’s hand inside
her purse, looking

for her handkerchief.
He recalls her
warning not to play
with unknown objects
the type that explode on impact. Later,

he lies in the dark remembering
how she pointed out
the silver threads of the morning light
just the day before
and he sparkles
with guilt.